Successful treatment of relapsed Ménière’s disease using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: A report of three cases I am a person who believes that if humanity has created different medicines since the Ancient Ages and especially since the 20th century, it is quite probable that one of those compounds serves to cure or improve Meniere, but simply nobody has tried it yet. It is evident that it is not very scientific to go testing drugs on sick people until we see that it works, but I am a bit like the X-Files, I think that "the truth is out there". Therefore, when I see on the news that they discover that a new drug or compound could be used for some disease, I always look for that drug and try to see if someone experimented with it for Meniere. Today I have seen that they have discovered that one of the first antidepressants from 1983 (fluvoxamine) has turned out to be very effective against Covid and I have searched if someone had tried it with Meneire. No, no one has used fluvoxamine for Meniere in a study, but I have found these three cases reporting improvement in vertigo by taking another drug from the same family of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
That is extremely interesting. My Menieres is back right now and is scaring the heck out of me. The "anxiety" part really rings a bell for me. I KNOW that "stress" is a big trigger for me but I now realize I may have been using the wrong word. Anxiety is closer to my trigger. For instance it is the "stress", or better word "anxiety" of planning for a trip during Covid, a social gathering with people, that sort of thing. However, I think the odds of getting a prescription for an SSRI to treat Menieres are not at all good. Hmmm, I do like the idea. Great work Ivan!
Do not ask for antidepressants for your Meniere or if you ask do not say that it is because you think they will improve your MD symptoms. Say that the disease affects you emotionally and that you don't stop thinking about how happy you were before you were sick, that you don't feel like doing anything all day, etc. They will prescribe antidepressants (which are SSRIs).
LOL - yes, that's great! I felt sad just reading your response One thing that I find a bit odd about that article is that they did the treatment for 6 months then stopped. After one year, their vertigo had not returned. That's good news but you have to wonder why the good effect lasts after the meds have stopped. If you are a person who is affected by anxiety, you would think that you would again be affected when there are no meds.
What you read is the description of an experiment limited in time (1 year). We do not know what happened from there, there may be relapses at 5, 10 or 20 years. We also do not know if after stopping the vertigos thanks to the medicine those people relaxed and therefore the source of their vertigos was controlled and they did not relapse when they stopped taking the medicine. Another theory could be simply that Meniere is a disease, almost always, of very slow progression. It took me 3 years to develop the three symptoms, it is possible that after stopping the antidepressants the Meniere would take several years to regain its previous activity. And a final theory, it is possible that antidepressants were really useless and that these patients have simply entered the phase of natural remission of MD which can happen even if the patient does absolutely nothing. Most doctors will tell you this when you tell them that you have tried something and that you have improved, it is the main problem of MD that successes in clinical trials can be disguised as simple natural remissions of the disease. To be 100% sure that something works, patients would have to be followed for 10 years or more, for me you will never know that something works for MD until: 1- The cause is discovered and it can be directly examined that it has disappeared through medical tests. or 2- A treatment apart from stopping the vertigos improves the rest of the symptoms by lowering the tinnitus and recovering part of the hearing in the majority of subjects. This would only be possible in early MD patients, people with advanced MD it is almost impossible for them to regain hearing or improve tinnitus because the damage will be permanent, but with young MD as test subjects it could be proven that something works for all three symptoms.
Thank you for posting this. I have bilateral meniere's and Cogan's syndrome which had in the last 8-10 months involved daily attacks of dizziness and constant tinnitus. Oto MD thought that my condition might be trying to "burn itself out". I am not a candidate for steroid injections in the ear and was becoming very frustrated with the daily attacks and trying to function and continue working. Fortunately. my job due to the pandemic has become telework and I did not have to drive into work every day and could work from home but as we know cognitive functioning is defintely affected when vertigo and dizziness are occurring. I ran across the use of SSRI's in VEDA online reading for chronic dizziness associated with MD and talked to my mental MD about adding it to my medications to see if it would help. This was in late July and by that time I was desparate for anything to try. I was started on 50 mg of sertraline and have seen a definite improvement in my symptoms. I have gone from daily attacks that lasted most of the day to maybe 2 attacks in the last 3 months that lasts 1-2 hrs. So, I would put myself in the category of SSRI and seeing significant improvement in my MD symptoms. Fortunately, I have a mental MD that was willing to RX the meds. As noted in the above posts an Oto MD might not be as willing to RX a mental med for treatment. MD treatment defintely involves thinking outside of the box.
Thank you JBR for this info! I hope you continue to enjoy success with it. Have you ever discussed how long to take the Sertraline with your MD?
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors have anti-inflammatory properties which is why it helps covid.
Lindy, do you think that is all there is to it? Many things have anti-inflammatory properties - heck Advil has anti-inflammatory properties. Hmm, I am having a mild attack right now, I think I will take an Advil just to see if it has any immediate affect. I don't think I have ever tried that little experiment. ( I thought I had tried pretty much everything! LOL )
For what it's worth, there's currently a trial studying the effects of venlafaxine (an SNRI) on Meniere's.